


Feather, Fire, Faith

by misha_collins_butt



Series: Destiel [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Future, M/M, Not sci-fi, Other, angel!cas - Freeform, bees!Cas, canon character death, castiel talks to the earth, mention of anal sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23678284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misha_collins_butt/pseuds/misha_collins_butt
Summary: There was a patch of elderflowers growing in the corner of the garden, where the wild grass seeped across the border.
Relationships: Castiel/Earth, Dean Winchester/Castiel, DeanCas, Destiel
Series: Destiel [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643035
Kudos: 6





	Feather, Fire, Faith

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a bit on the fence about this one. Please leave feedback.

_ ~Castiel once told me that angel tears are like snow, freezing as they fall. Crystallised in intricate patterns of ice. The difference is that angel tears don't melt. Pain immortalised of fractal spacetime. And when you touch them... you turn to dust.~ _

There was a patch of elderflowers growing in the corner of the garden, where the wild grass seeped across the border. Castiel couldn't be bothered to weed them out. They represented and protected against a plethora of things, but Castiel was particular to the Shakespearean symbolism it had - grief. It was closest to the truth that he knew, that Earth was discontented, restless, grieving Her greatest losses. 

For as much as he loved humanity, humanity was not kind to Earth, and so his pledge remained. To tend to Her wounds, care for Her fever. He lived out this promise on the empty planes of North Dakota, where rural acres stretched farther than even he could see in every direction, and his bees could harvest whatever they pleased as they buzzed about through swaying sod and sun-drenched forests.

Though he was nearly isolated, he had his unfaltering memories, where he visited at night while the crickets chirped around him, and where he relived his life from before. It was almost as real as the first time, experiencing it again, and he was often grateful that he was an angel, that he was not limited to visual memory like many humans. They did not play in his mind like a movie, but instead projected out around him, every sight and smell and touch just as real as they used to be.

And in that way, he still had all the company he could ask for. And in that way, too, he was happy and full. 

~ _He tells me sometimes about his hunters. How beautiful their father's handwriting was. How kind and compassionate Sam was. How Dean was as close to righteous as anyone could ever get. And though I once only paid them mind in bits and pieces, thankful for their protection, I would like to think I know them now.~_

Mother Earth was mourning, too. Maybe that was the connection that Castiel felt to Her, in the beginning.

She once, at her worst, sent nothing but good weather, possibly in a bid to counteract, to equalise. Where there was bad, so should there be good. As was the nature of Her in Her universe. It took the miracle from growth, made Castiel feel unchallenged.

She was often inconsolable for months at a time, even still, when the humans were finally making amends, serving their penance. Serving Earth instead of themselves.

It was beauty inimitable, watching them realise their erroneous misdeeds, slip into self-awareness. But not beauty in the way that the ocean was beauty, nor beauty in the way that angel wings could strike awe into any being that laid their eyes on them. It was beauty like a giant carcass clinging to sun bleached bones on the shore, beauty like acceptance upon one's deathbed. It was morbid and bittersweet, and Castiel had to remind himself that no apology was ever too little, too late. 

Even so, he wrestled with kindness in a way he knew most angels would never experience for themselves, and he was simultaneously caustic and grateful for it.

And to show his gratitude, he would talk to Her. Rambled on while gardening, mumbled sentiments here and there while checking on his hives, spent some afternoons in the thickets of grass that sprouted in the adjacent field, just relaying his memories. He wasn't sure when he'd started doing it, but when he'd felt the ease it brought Her, he couldn't bring himself to stop.

~ _Maybe it's his stories, or maybe it's that they are part of me again, after so, so long, and the relief that their corporeal forms provide for my creations, flowing resplendently like veins back into my soil. Maybe I am jubilant in redemption.~_

Sometimes, he would lose track of time, if ever time had existed in any meaningful way for an angel, and he would find himself watching the sun drawing in its last breaths and heaving itself below the horizon from his nest among the wheat. He would trail his wandering gaze back up to the sky and find the narcoleptic moon hovering droopily above him as he yawned in tandem.

He didn't need to sleep, but he liked how it felt to blink awake in the mornings to the light breaking through his opalescent curtains. Liked how human it was. Like what it reminded him of. Sugar cane kisses powdering his face two hours after dawn and molasses mornings wrapped in a down comforter and Dean.

At first, it had been too painful to try sleeping again. Castiel wasn't able to bear the immense burden of sleeping on his own...of waking up on his own. He felt naked and incomplete the few times he'd tried.

Gradually, though, he allowed Mother Earth's natural cycles to lull him into routine and it benefitted him to make sleeping part of it. Healed his soul and his mind. He was more afraid, now, of not sleeping, so certain that if he didn't shut his brain down for those few hours, it would go to rot and he would start forgetting.

Forgetting, ultimately, was far worse than remembering.

~ _I'd forgotten through the millennia who they were, forgotten what the stardust destined to mould them tasted like. It once belonged to me, once existed as a gem in my crown, before it was swept up by God for fates of glory and honour. I remember them now.~_

Castiel chose one of his favourites tonight. He was especially nostalgic, vulnerable. Bare feet, bare teeth, bared to the world in the shape of a bird in flight, reverent razors in the form of diffused feathers and cool, gunpoint insomnia the swoop of air glinting through them. His yearning stretched the wingspan so flawlessly, he almost forgot that he, himself, was still wingless.

As he was in most of his favourite memories, which seemed like a betrayal to his home realm, to love the parts of his life where he was missing an essential piece of Heaven. But from the moment he'd spotted Dean's soul in Hell all those many, many years ago, he'd been solely and irrevocably Dean's. Dean's to take apart and put back together, Dean's to have or to push away. He was Dean's long before he lost his wings, because his fall took place far earlier than the rest of the angels, even if he hadn't known it at the time. And he much preferred having Dean and no wings, to having wings and no Dean, and he was not about to apologise for that.

Tonight, he chose the first time he and Dean made love. They'd fucked, before that, in moments of fragile desperation and roiling adrenaline and unresolved fury. But they'd never made love until the night when Dean, wrecked and wrenching sobs over Jack's death, had come to Castiel seeking comfort, and found more than willing arms to snatch him from his free fall.

He'd also found tender tulip lips and sky blue words that gladly sheltered him from the pain, and he'd caved so easily, given in so doubtlessly to Castiel's trembled touches against speckled skin. 

~ _It's easy to forget, I think, when everything around you moves in lumbering strides. When your only view for all of time is that of the behemoth orbs cradled within the blanket of black infinity passing you by like clockwork. You get used to certain patterns and the rest, all that beautiful chaos, gets left in the cellar.~_

He'd held himself open, put himself on display as Cas had stretched him, spring-wet fingers smooth and caressing, and then he'd clambered on top of Cas and ridden the angel into oblivion, so slow that Cas had briefly entertained the idea that time was coming to a stop. But the breathy grunts and breathless gasps that'd ceaselessly slithered from Dean's mouth as they'd rocked together were indication enough that everything had been right where it was meant to be. For everything a place, where it would all eventually connect, where it would all align for just a precise moment and the universe would be at rest.

When finally they'd wound down and cocooned themselves in crooked blankets and ruffled hair, Dean had been in a state of dimensional nirvana, cast in the imperceivable colours of glowing neon galaxies that watched from lightyears away, and it was then that he'd murmured to Castiel his confessions.

They were not of sin or even impurity, they were not of evil or deceit, though they'd held the guilt of all four, had been an unshakable heaviness beneath Dean's starlight eyes. 

No, the words he'd spoken that night had been of passion and prose, of truth and resignation. They were three words Castiel had long before prayed his ears fortunate enough to hear, and they were strung together with so much realisation that the spit-and-tape construction paper holding Castiel together came unglued. 

Even angels were not so blessed to perform miracles such as this. And Dean Winchester in that moment, had been the single most omnipotent being in all the spacetime that Castiel had ever dared explore.

~ _Some things I'm happy to forget, like loneliness and pain. But he helps me remember the things I hadn't even realised I'd forgotten; violent pulchritude in the chaos of nature, warmth and light brushing skin. Those things, I'd much rather not forget. I sometimes wonder if I will again once he is gone. I can only hope that, at the end of time, when my corpse is all that is left, his voice will still whisper through my winds.~_


End file.
